Easyjob 3.0

[ghance]

hi,

 

been looking at hire software for a while now, and haven't entirely liked any of the offerings. find myself wishing for a hybrid (or maybe lobrid?) where a system has this feature on one system and that feature on the other etc etc.. i.e. the sidebar from hire track, the functions of rentalpoint with the graphics of easyjob.. but all things considered I think easyjob is the best compromise.

 

quick summary of wants:

 

.easy to use - even at stupid o'clock in the morning after weeks of back-2-back gigging. nice clean layout & gannt chart, none of this 10,000 item lists in a crowded screen of purple crippled gothic fonts on a gradient faded blue background.

 

.multi-site - having 3 stores is a really brain numbing thing to try co-ordinate.

 

.crew job sheets / skills list - the basic ones are fine at tracking kit, but what about the crew?? best jobs are about the people not the boxes.

 

.prep time / early pickup scheduling - yes I'd like a one day hire, but the gig will be in Kuwait and away for 3 months...

 

.options - remote access, hooks into barcode scanner, pat testers, accounts package, cherry on the top, etc

 

 

so what have I looked at?

 

.hire track - probably the best all rounder, but expensive by the time you've shelled out on the options.

.rentalpoint - does just about everything, but too many lists and numbers. not enough charts for my simple ways.

.totally brilliant software - hmm.. lot of people use it, but again waaayy too many lists. preferred RP.

.easyjob 3 - didn't get into at first, but the more you play with it the easier it gets. had to read the manual to work out what all the boxes meant. thats gotta be wrong..

 

soo.

 

- Who is using easyjob? and what do they think?

- Who rejected easyjob in favour of something else?

 

your thoughts gentleman please

 

ta

 

spike

[StevieR]

Hi Spike,

 

We're in the same situation as you and are starting to evaluate the different offerings out there. I've downloaded the demo of Easyjob and am starting to have a play. Will be a while before I can really make my mind up so am looking forward to hearing comments from the other BR members.

 

Will post back with any opinions as I form them.

 

Another one you may want to include is Insphire

 

Steve

[3guk]

Good timing or what, just recieved this 10 minutes ago. So its hot off the press.

 

http://www.ukslc.org/News/Company_News/Eas...er_Service.html

 

If its good enough for bandit its good enough for me

[ghance]

thanks guys...

 

looked at Insphire last year but thought for the price hire track was a better offering. Insphire was good with products but not so good with staff management.

 

have a look at rentalpoint www.rentp.com .. rentalpoint cheaper and packed with handy features.

 

.crew handling: staff skills & training data. the crew job sheet is a great feature.

 

.handles lists of accessories for a given product.. say truss pins.

 

.setup list of alternatives for given product... great for trainees who don't know you can substitute a QSC PL2 for a PLX.

 

.attach pictures of products.. so trainees can recognise a product by its photo.

 

.list of changes between different order versions... i.e. gear all prep'd and waiting to go, then the phone rings...

 

.scheduled prep time

 

.. I don't know.. gonna have try point scoring easyjob vs rentalpoint.. and demo to the lads before we make a decision. if only we could cherry pick the best bits of both..

 

let me know how you get on steve

 

spike

[henny]

one thing that we have found usefull with easyjob it the pat test intergration,

rathere than spending ££££ on the softwhere for our tester it uploads in to easy job direct, and stores the pat test data along with all the other info for the item.

[johnhuson]

There is some disscussion about Easyjob in this topic.

[hughesy]

Hi Spike, CSS and Production AV (both based in Cheltenham) are using Easyjob. Pete McCrae, aka LittleDJ implemented both systems so he's your man to speak to. He's on holiday at the moment so I'll PM him, don't expect a reply straight away.

 

Dave

 

 

 

Moderation: off-topic personal chat removed

[ghance]

hi dave,

I'd really appreciate a chat with Pete.. this is my pet project during winter maintenance. and mark @ kave has been helpful as well with a demo of rental-point.. he trying to get a limited demo CD sorted of the latest revision.

 

IMHO easyjob has a better layout, and has the potential to be really integrated.. seems to be able to talk to a whole bunch of different applications and devices. but rental point has loads of 'real-world' features all ready to go... we'll see what happens and report back.

 

spike

 

 

 

Moderation: off-topic personal chat removed

[Stuart91]

There is an interesting discussion going on about this kind of thing over at ProsoundWeb just now.

 

http://srforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/...700/#msg_150790

[kim]

Hi, I have found this topic very interesting as I myself am starting to look at systems for the place I work.

 

I have had a look at EasyJob but found it a bit restrictive for the kind of work we do, are there any more general packages that have hire tracking built in but are not exclusively for hire?

 

We need it to work for jobs that have aspects of

Hire

Sale

Service

Manufacture

Crew

 

Also need it to cover

All purchase orders

Maintenance and inspection schedules

The ability to sub-hire

Project collaboration

Budgets

 

Any one got any suggestions?

[johnhuson]

Hi Kim,

 

You might want to take a look at Hiretrack Eclipse, not sure it will 100% meet your bill but from your list and from our experience with this product I reckon it will come close. Not knowing Easy Job at all, I'm not sure if it does more or less than Hiretrack but you might want to take a look.

[beles]

Hi

 

looks like I'm not alone. I'm searching for a rental company in switzerland and have tested (or looked at) following software:

 

- easyjob 3

- gevitas reflex

- production assistent

- rentalpoint (only video)

- rentaldesk nx

- hiretrack (still installing)

 

my first impressions:

 

gevitas reflex

===========

can do lots of stuff really fast. to select articles for a job is much more faster and more flexible then in easyjob: is is possible to highlight certain positions from a job and copy and paste them into a new one. For new jobs you have shopping cart where can fill in the quantity in a list with all/certain category type articles. I really like such features. With one report you can create offers, confirmations etc. as you can change introduction text within a field in the job section. it shows the status of the jobs in a explorer like view etc. It can generate mails with a attached pdf which will be added to the database so you have a overview what you did send the customer.

it was quite my favourite BUT: the software (at least the demo version I got) has something from a public beta by Microsoft... Installation on a English windows xp => failed as it wasn't able to cope with the space in "program files". many small bugs and yesterday I managed to bring the database into an inconsistent state disallowing to add new articles. the support forum looks quite odd as there are many post which were never answered and my posts didn't provoked any reaction for days. I expect for a business critical software to have a support which answers within 24 hours. if the software would work it would be a really nice tool for small to mid sized companies interested to do their paper work really fast

 

easyjob 3

=======

it runs very stable. good support (you get answers on the phone instantly). the report generator is included

problems: you have always to do a project to open a job. but not a that big problem. what I really disliked is the selection of articles for a job. it takes to long. it is not possible to copy and paste positions from one to another job. I didn't find out how to generate generic items. didn't find out either how to generate titles within the article list. ordering looks impossible to me (even some grouping is possible by opening different jobs within one project. that is what I really disliked about easyjob as I want to be able to order the list the way I like and to add commentaries and groupings into the listing. But as well: for small to mid sized companies it could be a possible choice as it runs - as far I can judge it - stable and the people at protronic are friendly to help you out with your problems. the manuals are good and they have training videos.

Limitations are: only category and subcategory for articles. explorer for jobs don't use colorcoding. you can't attache automatically the reports you generated for a customer to the customer to have an overview what you sent him.

 

everything I say: is not possible is: according to my knowledge it isn't possible.

 

production assistant

=============

small utility with limited functionality but with a free version. If you have a small company or a mid sized company with needs only to automatise the job management you should for sure test it. As it misses several features which we defined mandatory I haven't tested it too much

 

 

rentaldesk nx

=========

who the hell "designed" this thing? but design doesn't have to be connected to functionality. but I haven't tested it too long as it took me too long just to register the article categories etc. I think more suited for smaller companies. But try it out yourself if you dislike to have too many features build in which you will never use.

 

So as I haven't found anything that I really liked I hope that rentalpoint or hiretrack will be something good. I liked the rentalpoint video but I want to test the software first. Hiretrack I'm installing right now. I liked the manual as it looks quite clear (even it has some 500 pages).

 

cheers

Petr

[Pete McCrea]

Well I've only just spotted this topic.....

 

Easyjob.... Where do you start. For me I've been playing/working/fighting with the system for two years now. It's great. Protonic are great.

 

A bit of history might help. We saw EJ at Plasa 2004, and got a demo in the november. We started running it small scale then to evaluate. It seemed good, so CSS decided to buy the software. Around Jan this year they bought a decent Dell Server and the License, and it's been running well since then. It's taken an age to get all the kit in. If I was doing it again I would block out a week for this task and NOTHING else. If you don't get the data right in the first place it will take for ever to get right. And there is a lot of data against each item, but when it's all in it is a very powerful tool.

 

Would I buy it agian? Yes. Having left CSS, I would Put Easyjob in place for Production:av, and probably will- it's a matter of timing and cash flow, but having seen the power of the system for the price you pay I'd do it without hesitation. Add to this the extremely helpfull Protonic staff, and their great support makes it a winner. Also the reports are very flexible. It takes a while to learn how to edit them and the formula for getting figures in the right places, but agina once your there it's great.

 

Downsides? We had a few bugs in the system, probably caused by my lack of knowledge and ham fisted attempts at doing things, but the Protonic guys sorted these out. The user interface can be a bit daunting, but once you learn the tricks, it does work well and give a good level of customisability.

[beles]

gevitas reflex

===========

can do lots of stuff really fast. to select articles for a job is much more faster and more flexible then in easyjob: is is possible to highlight certain positions from a job and copy and paste them into a new one. For new jobs you have shopping cart where can fill in the quantity in a list with all/certain category type articles. I really like such features. With one report you can create offers, confirmations etc. as you can change introduction text within a field in the job section. it shows the status of the jobs in a explorer like view etc. It can generate mails with a attached pdf which will be added to the database so you have a overview what you did send the customer.

it was quite my favourite BUT: the software (at least the demo version I got) has something from a public beta by Microsoft... Installation on a English windows xp => failed as it wasn't able to cope with the space in "program files". many small bugs and yesterday I managed to bring the database into an inconsistent state disallowing to add new articles. the support forum looks quite odd as there are many post which were never answered and my posts didn't provoked any reaction for days. I expect for a business critical software to have a support which answers within 24 hours. if the software would work it would be a really nice tool for small to mid sized companies interested to do their paper work really fast

 

at the end after all testing we ended up with gevitas reflex: hiretrack installed on my english windows xp half in german and half in english. It crashed several times with division by zero errors. can be an exception as the support team never heard about such problems. Rentalpoint looked nice and worked without problems. But looks like the design stoped somewhere in windows 3.11 times and the print outs looked like on my old mannesman tally printer from 1985. But the point why we didn't chose it was that it wasn't possible to copy and paste parts from one contract into another what we do quite often as a small company.

 

Back to gevitas: the demoversion is an old version of the productiv one. As soon we got the full version most of the errors where gone. Other where fixed upon our request. Just don't try to use the forum to get support. just write an email or call them directly. For testing you should request not just the demo cd (which you have to install to c:\programme as it doesn't support spaces in the file name like "program files") but as well the newest version of .exe file.

 

why did we decide for reflex: possibility to let it run with a MySQL server. Up to 3 concurrent connection with the basic licence. Fast shopping cart possibilty to compose an offer in less then 5 minutes. Possibility to import and update our master data from excel files (even some files are missing). From MySQL it is easy to publish the articles as well on our webpage etc.

 

downpoints still not resolved: to change the reports you need Crystal Reports 8.5 which is not avaible anymore... the v.11 engine should be included at some point but we don't know yet when. So you have to give the redesign to them or get somewhere an old version of Crystal Reports.

 

Chers